Body Recomposition Guide: Build Muscle and Lose Fat for Women

Body Recomposition For Women: How to Lose Fat and Gain Muscle

Do you want to lose weight and obtain that lean, toned, feminine body, but the idea of months of cardio followed by years of resistance training turns you off?

What if we told you there was a way to simultaneously lose fat and gain muscle while improving your strength and function?

No, this isn’t another fitness marketing fad full of empty promises. In fact, it is how fitness professionals have been helping people transform their bodies for years!

In this article, we will discuss body recomposition for women. We explain how it works, key nutritional strategies, and the best exercise.

Understanding Body Composition and Body Recomposition

Burning body fat and building lean muscle are not exclusive to fitness fanatics, it is for everyone! Below, we discuss what body recomposition is, and how it works.

What is Body Recomposition and How Does It Work?

Body recomposition refers to the process of losing fat and building muscle. This can be achieved by performing a resistance training routine, coupled with a high protein-calorie deficit. A calorie deficit refers to consuming fewer calories than you burn.

During body recomposition, resistance training increases lean muscle mass, while calories are reduced to form a calorie deficit. When this happens, our body begins to use stored energy as fuel, burning fat. However, during this time, the calorie deficit can lead to loss of muscle mass. To combat this, protein intake needs to be increased to preserve muscle mass.

Key Differences Between Weight Loss and Body Recomposition

The difference between weight loss and body recomposition is that weight loss is solely focused on reducing body fat and total body weight. Meanwhile, body recomposition aims to decrease body fat, while increasing lean muscle mass.

For weight loss, we need to need to take undertake a calorie deficit. During this time it is also recommended that we exercise, however, it is optional.

Body recomposition on the other hand requires both a calorie deficit and a resistance training routine. The calorie deficit helps burn body fat, while the resistance training routine builds lean muscle.

Benefits of Body Recomposition for Women

Body recomposition is excellent for improving our appearance and quality of life. Below, we list various reasons you should consider body composition for your training.

Achieving a Leaner, Toned Physique

Body recomposition is a powerful tool for developing a lean and toned physique. When we shift our diet to a calorie deficit, we begin to reduce body fat from all areas of the body.

Meanwhile, our resistance training routine and increased protein intake help us develop lean muscle mass. The combination decreased body fat and increased muscle mass creating greater muscle definition.

Boosts Metabolism

Body recomposition is an excellent way to enhance your metabolism. This is achieved through correct nutrition and resistance training.

As mentioned, body recomposition requires a high protein intake to preserve muscle mass. But the benefits of protein don’t stop there. It has also been shown to improve satiety and increase thermogenesis, this is where the body raises its temperature or energy, boosting its metabolism.

This creates a powerful caloric swing as the increase in satiety will stop us from snacking between meals, while the increased metabolism will increase resting energy expenditure.

Meanwhile, resistance training increases energy expenditure for some time after your workout. While aerobic exercises such as walking and running only burn calories during your workout, resistance training continues to burn energy for up to 38 hours after your workout.

The combination of these factors proves to powerful tool for altering our body composition and helping us obtain a lean, feminine figure.

Enhancing Overall Health and Longevity

Body recomposition can help improve our overall health and longevity. Exercise and correct nutrition have long been associated with weight loss, better health, and improved function. However, in recent years, it has been revealed that strength and nutrition are strongly associated with all-cause mortality. This is the total number of deaths in a specific time, regardless of the cause of death.

One of the biggest revelations is the association between grip strength. Recent evidence suggests that a strong grip is indicative of overall strength and physical function. Furthermore, higher levels of muscle mass and strength are associated with a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, frailty, and mortality.

Body composition takes advantage of these principles, requiring us to eat a nutrient-dense, high-protein diet, and engage in resistance training routines. This increases muscle mass and strength, boosting metabolism, reducing chronic illness, and improving longevity.

Improve Function and Strength

Body composition is incredible for improving strength and function. Resistance training is based on compound and isolation exercises that increase muscle mass and strengthen our movement patterns.

Resistance training programs are often created with compound movements such as squats, lunges, deadlifts, presses, and rows. These exercises engage multiple muscle groups and mimic daily movement patterns.

When we apply external resistance to these movements using machines and free weights, we can increase muscle strength, create stronger movement patterns, and improve our function.

Nutrition Strategies for Successful Body Recomposition

The biggest factor that helps us lose fat and gain muscle is nutrition. From the adjustments to our calorie and protein consumption to ensuring we are hitting our macronutrient targets, all these components are essential to successful, health, and body recomposition. Below, we address each area to help you safely lose fat and gain muscle.

Do You Need to Be in a Caloric Deficit?

When you undertake your body recomposition plan to lose fat and gain muscle you should be in a calorie deficit. While it is possible to eat an equal or excess amount of calories, you will need to exercise to burn those calories to burn fat.

For example, to burn 300 calories with exercise, it will take approximately:

• Walking: 45–60 minutes
• Running 5 mph: 35 minutes
• Cycling: 30 Minutes

Reducing calories through nutrition is much easier as you can easily cut out a single calorie-dense or processed food, such as soda, chocolate, or fast food. Or reduce your calorie intake by smaller amounts each meal.

Simply put, it is easier to eat less food than to burn more calories.

How Much Protein Should You Consume for Muscle Growth?

Protein intake is vital for our body to function and at a base level for the average person we should be consuming 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, and for active individuals, the figure increases to 1.4–1.6g/kg/day.

However, for individuals in a calorie deficit, these figures increase to 1.6–2.2g/kg/day to preserve lean muscle mass during weight loss. Below we have displayed protein requirements for someone who weighs 80 kilograms.

Eg.

• Standard: 0.8 g x 80 kg = 64 g per day
• Active: 1.4 g x 80 kg = 112 g per day
• Calorie Deficit: 1.6 g x 80 kg = 128 g per day

These are the daily protein requirements for each activity level. To hit these targets we recommend dividing this across each meal. A good rule is adding 25–30g for each meal.

Below is a list of high-protein foods and their protein content. The key is to add a variety of high-protein foods to your meals.

Balancing Carbs and Fats for Energy and Recovery

Carbohydrates and healthy fats are essential for a balanced diet. Complex carbohydrates such as whole grains, brown rice, oats, beans, lentils, sweet potatoes, fruits, and vegetables are excellent for providing our body with slow-release energy.

Adequate carbohydrate intake is essential during body recomposition as it helps restore our body’s stored energy (muscle glycogen) while reducing muscle damage and improving recovery.

Healthy fats, such as monosaturated and polyunsaturated fats provide energy, absorb vital vitamins (A, D, E K), and support cell function. Found in food such as fish, olive oil, eggs, cheese, flaxseeds, and tofu, they can reduce post-workout inflammation, and soreness, while reducing glucose breakdown, which helps restore muscle glycogen.

Furthermore, these healthy fats support brain and skin health while regulating inflammation and hormone production.

High-Fiber Foods and the Role They Play in Body Recomposition

High-fiber foods are essential to body recomposition and overall health. A non-digestible carbohydrate, fiber adds volume to meals to keep us full which is crucial for reducing hunger and cravings when we are in a calorie deficit. This helps us stick to our diet and enables us to continue burning fat and building muscle.

Furthermore, it supports gut health and reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and colorectal cancer. This makes it a powerful nutrient for improving our overall health and wellness.

How Long Does Body Recomposition Take?

The timeline for body recomposition varies based on the individual. Below we discuss factors influencing body recomposition, as well as milestones, and how to adapt your plan based on your progress.

Factors That Influence the Timeline

How long body recomposition takes depends on several factors, including age, weight, gender, activity level, and goal.

Regarding age, someone in their 20s will lose weight much faster than someone in their 50s due to an increased metabolism. Furthermore, males tend to have a faster metabolism, which may speed up the process.

Other factors such as personal goals and physical activity level also influence the recomposition timeline. Individuals who are overweight or who would like to reduce body fat levels to single digits can expect a longer timeline. Meanwhile, those who train more frequently, or at a higher intensity may experience faster results.

The key to successful body recomposition is to create a diet and training plan that you can sustain long-term. While it can be tempting to drastically cut calories and increase exercise frequency and intensity to burn body fat fast, it likely will not be sustainable.

A better approach is to start with a small calorie deficit and tailor your diet, workouts, and training frequency to suit your needs. While this may be slower, it will be far more sustainable, leading to long-term healthy changes.

Setting Realistic Expectations and Milestones

The key to successful body recomposition is to set realistic expectations. The early stages of body recomposition can be exciting, as getting fitter, stronger, and slimmer can fill us with motivation.

Those initial weeks can provide us with satisfaction and a sense of achievement as our bodies and energy levels change. However, as weeks pass, progress can naturally slow, leading to frustration.

To remedy this, we need to have realistic expectations. While weight loss and gains in strength can happen quickly, there will be times when things slow down. In these moments, it is important that we remain cool, and reflect on our progress.

Often when our training stalls and the weight doesn’t budge, it can be difficult to see how far we have come amidst the frustration. However, when we take a step back, it can be much easier to how far we have come, which can spur us on to continue pursuing our goals.

Adapting Your Plan Based on Progress

Adapting your plan based on your progress is for long-term healthy change. Typically when we think about weight loss, many people believe they need to maintain a calorie deficit, however, this is not the case.

The purpose of a calorie deficit is to lose fat. However, once we reach our goal weight, our aim changes to maintaining weight, requiring us to switch our calorie deficit to calorie maintenance.

For example, say our daily calorie intake is 2,000 per day. When we want to burn fat, we create a calorie deficit of 300 calories, leaving us with an allowance of 1,700 calories daily.

Once reach our goal weight and figure, we need to switch to maintenance calories. This is a calorie intake that meets your daily calorie expenditure. This will stop us from losing weight and muscle mass.

From here, we would increase our intake by 200 calories per day to 1,900 calories. Following this we would monitor weight, body fat, and energy levels. If we continue to lose weight, we can increase calories by an additional 100 per day, and if gain weight, we can lower it by 100 calories.

Body recomposition can take months, and during the process, we will need to make adjustments to reach our goal and stay there.

Common Mistakes Women Make in Body Recomposition

Body composition is the careful balance of resistance and nutrition which allows us to shed unwanted body fat and build lean muscle. Whille this may seems simple, their are many potential hurdles wch can derail our plan.  Below is a list of common mistakes made during a body composition plan.

Undereating or Restricting Calories Too Much

One of the biggest mistakes many people make during their body composition plan is they undereat and restrict calories. While reducing calories can speed up the weight loss process it is unsustainable, leading to hunger, cravings, loss of muscle mass, and lower energy.

Body composition requires a careful balance of correct calorie and protein intake to lose fat and maintain muscle mass. Furthermore, it provides energy to perform our workouts and daily functions.

If we undereat, we not only jeopardize our body recomposition plan and progress, we starve our body of vital nutrients, which can negatively impact our health.

Neglecting Sleep and Recovery for Muscle Growth

Neglecting sleep is a common mistake that can negatively impact our recovery. In a world where we are chronically online, working long hours, and busier than ever, it can be tempting to forgo sleep to get even a few extra hours of downtime. However, missing out on those additional hours of sleep can impact our recovery and overall health.

Approximately 7–8 hours of sleep is recommended each night. Sadly, many adults fail to hit these targets due to poor sleep habits or sleep disorders, with 56% of Americans suffering from sleep problems. This leads to impaired cognitive function, motivation, and emotions, and an increased risk of chronic illnesses such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

Furthermore, sleep is crucial for balancing bone, muscle, and fat mass. Individuals suffering from poor sleep were identified to have lower muscle mass and decreased grip strength, highlighting the negative impact of poor sleep. This is due to the negative impact it has on the synthesis and breakdown of muscle protein, which leads to loss of muscle mass.

We recommend 7–8 hours of sleep each night to ensure effective recovery and muscle growth. To achieve this you must create a predictable sleep routine. This includes a set bedtime, no caffeine in the late afternoon, and avoiding heavy meals and alcohol before bed. Following this formula will ensure your body is ready for a restful night's sleep for proper recovery.

Relying Too Much on Cardio and Not Enough on Strength Training

A big trap many people fall into is relying too much on cardio. While cardio can burn calories, it does not build lean muscle mass, and too much cardio can burn vital calories, leading to reduced lean muscle mass.

During body recomposition, we must prioritize resistance training and protein intake to maintain muscle. However, if you would like to program additional cardio to improve your aerobic fitness, you will need to increase your calories to account for the additional energy expenditure. This will ensure you have enough calories to maintain weight, build muscle, and fuel your resistance training and cardio workouts.

Best Exercises for Losing Fat and Building Muscle

Exercising for body recomposition requires a combination of workouts to build muscle and burn fat. Below we list each form of exercise, including training and load recommendations to help you achieve your body recomposition goals.

Strength Training: Lifting Weights for Muscle Growth

Strength and resistance training is the most important component of body recomposition. As mentioned, weight training has an energy-burning effect for up to 38 hours after your workout. This means that we can effectively build lean muscle and burn fat.

Resistance training such as free weights, bands, machines, resistance bands, and bodyweight exercises can all be used to overload muscle tissue to promote growth.

Below are load recommendations for strength, hypertrophy (growth), and endurance. We display sets, repetitions, and load recommendations for each training style.

Training styleSetsRepetitionsLoad RecommendationStrength3–41–680–100% of 1RMHypertrophy3–48–1260–80% of 1RMEndurance3–415+60% or less of 1RM

• 1RM = One repetition maximum: The maximum weight an individual can lift for one repetition using the correct technique.

Hypertrophy training is traditionally used to build and preserve lean muscle mass. However, it is common for individuals to add exercises that utilize strength and endurance load recommendations during a hypertrophy workout.

This will add variety to training and allow you to enhance all areas of muscular fitness.

Cardio Workouts: Balancing Fat Loss and Muscle Preservation

Cardiovascular workouts can be added to your body recomposition plan to increase fat loss. While a calorie deficit is all that is required to burn fat, adding cardiovascular workouts can help you burn additional calories and improve cardiovascular health.

Cardiovascular exercise can be performed in short, medium, and long durations, with each containing various benefits. Below we list each type, their benefits, and which type is best for your body recomposition.

Anaerobic Exercise

Anaerobic exercise (without oxygen) is when we exercise for short bursts and rely on energy production without oxygen. Exercises requiring short bursts such as sprinting, skipping, plyometrics, rowing, and high-intensity interval training are considered anaerobic. While this also encompasses weightlifting, we will refer to the explosive movements for this section.

Anaerobic exercise is perfect for anyone who dislikes long-form cardio but still wants to reap the benefits of cardiovascular exercise. Anaerobic training has been shown to improve exercise capacity by 5.48%, immunity by 3.08%, and cardiovascular function by 4.31%.

Performing these forms of exercise in under two minutes at a high intensity utilizes our muscle's limited stores of energy known as ATP (adenosine triphosphate). This is extracted from amino acids, carbohydrates, and fatty acids.

This form of training is excellent for body composition as it not only improves cardiovascular function but also increases bone and muscle strength.

Aerobic

Aerobic exercise (with oxygen) is performed for longer durations and our body switches from ATP energy source to oxygen. This happens with medium to longer duration cardiovascular such as running, swimming, and cycling beyond 10 minutes in duration.

Aerobic exercise has long been known for its ability to improve cardiovascular function and health it is the reason many people will add it to their body recomposition program.

However, as mentioned, it does consume energy, which will need to be accounted for in accounting for your calorie deficit. While there is often speculation about if cardio will burn muscle, it has been shown it may preserve and even increase skeletal muscle mass.

Adding aerobic exercise can be a fantastic addition to your body's recomposition plan for burning fat. We just need to ensure account for it in calorie and protein intake to maintain muscle mass.

Walking: An Underrated Tool for Increasing Activity Levels

Walking is the most underrated tool increasing activity levels and burning fat. While intense bouts of cardio contribute to energy expenditure, it does not compare to the slow, cons, and steady burn that comes with walking around on a daily basis.

For reference, runners and walkers burn an average of 106.9 calories over 1 mile. This figure varies based on age, gender, weight, height, and ethnicity.

This is welcome news for anyone who wants to burn additional calories but doesn’t have the time or the interest in running longer distances.

To burn additional fat through walking we recommend adding a 20–30 minute walk to your routine at least twice weekly. This can be increased further by more incidental walking such as using the stairs, walking during your commute, or even just a stroll at lunch. This will not only increase your fat-burning potential, but also help you de-stress, and improve your cognitive function.

Conclusion - Recap

Body recomposition is an excellent way to train. Whether you want to obtain a muscular

physique, increase strength, or simply lose weight, it is a powerful tool for improving your health.

If you are considering a body recomposition plan remember to follow these strategies:

• Eat in a calorie deficit by consuming fewer calories than you are burning.
• Eat a nutrient-dense diet, rich in protein, complex carbohydrates, and health fats.
• Prioritize protein intake. Aim for 1.6–2.2 grams per kilogram of bodyweight daily.
• Add a lean source of protein to each meal (approximately 20–30g).
• Prioritize resistance training over cardiovascular exercise.
• Aim for 7–8 hours of sleep each night for effective recovery and muscle growth
• Track your progress using scales, measurement, and photos while monitoring energy levels, gym performance, and clothing sizes.

Follow recommendations and you will be well on your way to burning body fat, building lean muscle and enhancing function.

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